The Campaign to Save Crystal Lake
by apostrophicfolk
Summary: In this serialized novel, Crystal Lake's most durable denizen finds himself under attack on every front. Reader feedback appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

He was running fast as the woods would let him. No worry that the heat had returned. The breeze feathering his bare face cooled him, soothed him like Mother's breath. His heart thudded. He was thirsty. Before, water was everywhere, but no more. Those houses, those buildings, those streets, that winding highway, they all stood where the Lake's arteries had once splintered into the Woods. He was not far from the Lake itself, but he would have to wait until night. There were too many out to take. The hikers, the bathers, the tanners – all the bodies that made his blood boil, and brought about the headaches. But his irritants were no longer confined to the young adventurers. They had started to come in new shapes.

Suits. Fine, like in the sun-faded magazines back at the Cabin. And surrounding the suits were men, something like his age, with workers uniforms. They wore hard masks as well, but theirs were yellow and remained atop their heads, as if to demonstrate their perfectly symmetrical faces to him. _See us_, they said. _We're not like you_. And they had come to take his woods.

A deer passed him not twelve feet away. She was beautiful, and when she saw him they both paused. She was meat, and she was clothing, and her bones were new weapons to add to his arsenal. But she was also symmetry, a perfectly aligned body. She was unfair and must therefore be punished.

And she was gone.

He knew the fate of animals once they left these woods. The highway claimed so many of them, for they were stupid and soft. They had not learned how to stay away. And at the north end of the Woods, the hunters perched for half a year sometimes. Those hunters remained one of his favorite targets, because he recognized himself in them. He was a hunter, a very good hunter. As Mother left, and took with her the need for speech, the Woods themselves had taught him how to survive. He watched the foxes and the snakes; the owls, the wolves when they would let him. He learned how to kill. And on those occasions when he hunted closer to the homes, he watched the cats, who had taught him the most. They taught him that there need be no reason to kill other than the satisfaction of an instinct. And that was his instinct. He felt it deep down in the black pit of his bowels.

For a moment he considered chasing the deer. He had outrun everything in the Woods, and was its undisputed master. But there was the new thing: the weakness. New this season. Certain things were harder to lift, harder to contain. He wondered if perhaps he wasn't sick. After all, before he fell asleep in the water, he had been sick all the time. "Mother's sick boy." He'd relished those words, and had played up his ailments to gain maybe another embrace or another hour of attention. But since the water, nothing had bothered him until this season, _this season …_

He did not seek out his reflection. There was no need. But he knew his shadow very well, and it had not been so small in a long time. Something was happening this season, and perhaps the men with the yellow masks had brought it to him.

He would have to give it back to them.

A quick look around – what would support him? He found a sturdy oak with long, thick, low-lying branches, and began hoisting his hulking frame up limb by limb. His muscles ached, which angered him and made him climb harder and higher. In less than a minute he had scaled the oak tree and could see the entirety of his domain. Like him, the Woods seemed smaller than ever before. The thicket of trees trimming Crystal Lake had thinned considerably. Smoke puffed from somewhere beyond them.

The tree below him cracked and popped. It was growing weak like he was. He lowered himself carefully and dropped soundlessly to the ground. His head spun a bit, and he had to lean on the wood for support. The men with the yellow masks were to the east. His Cabin and his Tools stood between them and him, he was suddenly taken with the urge to go home and gather his things.

It was time to hunt.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Of course this wasn't Olsen's day. He never got days that were his. First he had gotten hardly any sleep the night before because the goddamn resort kids had been up all night playing electric hippie music out of the back of a flatbed truck not three hundred feet from his cabin. Then when he did get to sleep, he slept too long and had to rush out the door to make it to the site on time. Which meant he had to forgo the breakfast he wanted – a livermush, egg & cheese biscuit from Donna's diner – and instead had to settle for some convenience store coffee and a cinnamon roll from 1962. And of course the site is so loaded with goddamn hippie protest kids and their trust-fund hybrid cars that he had to park twenty minutes away. And now this – an ever-widening pool of blood.

"Hold your arm higher," Olsen said.

"I can't."

The kid, Caldwell, had really done a number on himself. Olsen had put him on the belt sander, thinking that was the place he could do the least amount of damage to himself, or worse, the job site. But of course the force of the thing had been too much for this puny kid, and he had careened off a metal girder and spun right into Donnie's circular saw. Cut the holy bejesus out of his arm. Blood, blood, blood.

"I'm gonna pass out," Caldwell cried.

"You're gonna be fine."

The kid turned ash white. His eyes started to dart frantically.

"Don't you dare …"  
Caldwell ralphed up his guts all over the place – and all over Olsen's lucky jeans.

"Goddamn it!"

The high, sighing _whirp_ of the ambulance cut the air, and Olsen looked up to see the poor truck scrambling to make it through the protest lines. Bastard kids wouldn't move, even though a working man's life was in danger. He suddenly wished he had the power to – whatsitcalled – teleport himself into the ambulance. Big truck like that could mow through a line of those resort kids faster than you can say _bullet._

"Whyn't you stay conscious just a bit longer, Caldwell, til you're somebody else's problem."

"Ungh …"

"You said it."

But the kid was out. Olsen began to feel very sorry for himself. If this Caldwell kid croaked, the responsibility for telling the poor shit's mother was liable to fall on him. Liable – it suddenly occurred to him that he might be found liable for the kid's injuries. It was an accident! How long had Olsen been a foreman, for this very crew? Nothing like this had ever happened. His record was spit-clean. Well, it had been – now it was as spotty as his puke-scarred jeans, which were beginning to stink in this heat something fierce.

#

Once the kid was packed into the truck, babbling about seeing some monster in the shadows, Olsen snuck around behind the foreman's trailer to the spigot so he could wash the vomit off his pants. This was an all-male crew, thank God, but he was never the type to undress in front of anybody else. Just didn't feel natural. Even at home with Marybeth he'd strip down to his skivvies with the sheet pulled tight over him, and they'd been married now 25 – no, 26 years. If it wasn't a problem for her, then it wasn't nobody else's business. And so Neil Olsen hung back in the shadows and carefully pulled off his jeans so he could spray them off. In this sun, they'd dry out in no time.

"Neil Olsen?"

"Gah!" he cried, spinning around.

There was a woman there, in the shadows with him.

"Oh God," she said, averting her eyes skyward. "I'm very sorry. I didn't know you would –"

"No, it's fine, it's fine," he said, burning crimson. "Just gets very dirty out here –"

" – sure."

" – we all have to do this at one time or another –"

" – I can imagine –"

" – gimme just a –"

"Absolutely," she said, and then didn't move.

Olsen grabbed the half-soaked jeans by the belt loops and angled his body at a diagonal to her as he shook the except water and chunks off the denim. He was too embarrassed to face her straight on, but wasn't confident enough in the whiteness of his tighties show her his backside. The jeans would have to do. He pulled them on.

"Sorry."

"No problem."

"I'm Kendra Bascomb," she said, flashing her large hazel eyes at him. "From the Parks Service?"

_Christ_, Olsen thought. _The protestors are winning._ "Yuh," he said. "Whyn't you come on in?"

He led her around the front of the foreman's trailer, catching a glimpse of the sign-carrying protestors as they walked. They must have known who she was, because as soon as she got into view they cheered and whooped like The Dead had risen. Olsen fought the urge to flash his customary finger at them – at least until he knew exactly what they lady was here for.

"What exactly are you here for?" he asked, once they were sitting inside by the fan.

""I'll start with some coffee, if you got it."

"Sure." He poured her some of the percolator coffee, knowing full well it had been unplugged for at least two hours. If it was distasteful to her, she didn't show it. Olsen prepared for hardball.

"So, Miss Bascomb?"

"The National Parks Service is, uh, investigating whether or not this area is a habitat that should be singled out for preservation."

"I'd heard. What's so special that the government's gotta preserve it?"

"Quite a bit, actually. Several birds, rodents, other small animals, and fish – all of which are uncommon to this area."

"Uh-huh."

"And we in the Parks Service feel that before any further damage is done, Connor Construction should halt their efforts in this area."

"Uh-huh."

"Until we come to some sort of equitable arrangement."

"Uh-huh. Miss Bascomb –"

"Another coffee, please."

Olsen paused. Was she playing him? He decided to pour. "Miss Bascomb, for starters … you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't make orders – I take them. Somebody says, 'build,' and I do it. Tell you the truth, I've never even met Bill Connors. He don't make it down here at-all."

"I know that. We've tried repeatedly to reach Mr. Connors, and your direct supervisor, Jimmy Ramirez. Neither of them are willing to talk."

"This is America, ain't it? Man don't have to talk unless he wants to."

She nodded. Lord, she was pretty, if a mite short for his tastes. Marybeth was a giant compared to this little thing, in both dimensions. Olsen began to feel a stirring deep within himself. Maybe it was the damp denim, and maybe it was something else, but he was starting to wonder what this Bascomb woman would be willing to trade for a halt on construction. He hoped what he was thinking didn't show up on his face.

He decided to change tacks. "And I reckon the government could make Bill Connors stop if they really wanted to."

"It may come to that," she said. "But for now we really just hoped you would do the right thing."

There was a fair amount of noise outside. Jackhammers, the two dozers, the protest chants. And the windows were shaded. He was the boss here – wouldn't nobody come looking for him unless godforbid there was another accident. His luck couldn't be that bad, could it? He thought of Marybeth for one quick second, then cleared his mind.

"Well, there's the right thing, and then there's the prices we pay. Maybe we can come to some kind of an arrangement … you and I …"

#

Kendra stormed out of the trailer.

"Pervert."

The air-headed protestors cheered for her when she emerged, but she just focused on getting to her car – the Range Rover parked two feet away from the woods. The construction crew behind her carried on with their business – no whistles or hoots, not anything. If anything, it was her so-called brothers-in-arms out on the line who were catcalling. As she approached the horde, she imagined herself standing in front of them on a soapbox with a bullhorn: _Go home. You aren't doing anything useful. If you want to save this land, do it with the law. You and your signs are a joke – you're too easy to dismiss as nutbags._ She thought about how good it would feel to say that, just at least once, to these smug bastards who pretended to be doing the "good work." But walking through the crowd, she did nothing but nod and smile.

Someone was standing behind her car. Someone big. Someone big was watching her.

"Excuse me," she said to one of the hippies – a big guy rolling a cigarette from a pouch of Mother Earth Tobacco. She knew that company well – they were an offshoot of the largest tobacco company in the world, and one of the worst polluters in history. But "Mother Earth" was in the name, so of course it must be okay.

"Yeah?"

"Could you walk with me to my …"

But that someone was gone.

"Never mind."

"No, man … what?"

"I said never mind."

She walked briskly to her car, wondering what she had seen. By the time she got into her Range Rover, and her favorite CD started playing, and that nasty foreman's trailer was in her rear view mirror, and the air conditioning began to blow through her hair, she was convinced that what she had seen was the heat and nothing more.

_God makes a pretty world,_ she thought. _He wouldn't make something that looked like that._

#

At the evening whistle, Olsen decided to stay on in the trailer. Marybeth was home waiting for him, but he didn't trust himself with her. He was still angry – partially with Bill Connors and ol' Ramirez for dumping this National Parks business on him, partially with that cold bitch Bascomb for the way she left – but mostly with himself. This was not who he had wanted to be, but goddamn it this is who he was. And he would get home, and Marybeth would be nice to him, and he would hate himself so much that something bad would happen.

_Crrk._

Goddamn noisy woods. They'd given him the creeps since he was a boy back in Scout camp and he got stuck alone in the tent while the other boys snuck into town. A sound like that could be anything – a pinecone dropping on the carpet of bark, or a bear stalking the perimeter of its domain.

_Crrk._

Olsen decided to turn on the portable TV set. He could get some work done here. Frankly, sooner they could get done building this hotel, the sooner he and Marybeth could move back closer to the city. That's where the boys were, anyway, and maybe they could patch things up –

_CRRK-SNAP._

That wasn't a pinecone. Olsen rose to the window and tried to make sense of the dark shapes outside. Something sounded like … burbling, like a brook, but there weren't any water sources around.

Except the spigot. Goddamn, had he left that on? Connors would kill him.

He grabbed a flashlight and made his way out to the back of the trailer. Sure enough, water was spilling out of it. The water was piped in from a portable water buffalo, hitched up to the main trailer about fifty feet away. The shadows around it seemed to be moving.

"Hello?" he called. Nothing. Olsen reached to turn the water off, but –

_Crrk._

He shone his light back on the water buffalo. Sure enough, it looked like there were feet under there.

"You on private property, whoever you are."

Olsen took a deep breath to inflate himself, and walked toward the water buffalo.

"You hear me?"

He raised the flashlight like a weapon, and leapt around the corner. Standing there, white faced, was Caldwell. His throat had been slit all the way, and the skin of his neck dropped down, showing muscle that looked black as hell in this light. Both his forearms had been cut off midway, right through the circular saw wound. And goddamn it if we wasn't still alive.

"Help me …" Caldwell burbled. And then he got the nastiest look in his eye.

_Shit_, Olsen thought, and spun around.

There was a monster there, probably seven feet tall, with a white mask where his face should be. The monster's arms were big as steel girders, and his right one was holding a goddamn machete.

"Marybeth, I'm so sorry –"

The machete swung through the air, and his neck suddenly stung. Olsen felt the back of his head clang against the water buffalo, and then it was like he was sailing through the air. When he finally landed, he looked up to watch the water from the spigot trickle down on him.

_Connors is going kill me_, he thought, and then went away.


	3. Chapter 3

Kendra had barely slept that night. Her room stunk, and the bed could not have been less comfortable if it was riddled with nails. By 5:30 she had decided to give up, and wandered the outer sidewalk in her robe for caffeine of any sort. The Lakeside Motel was a crooked arm-shaped monstrosity from the early 60s, and although it was nowhere near the side of any lake, Crystal or otherwise, it was the best her Parks service budget would allow. Too bad, she thought. If she'd taken a corporate law gig like Dad had implored her, she'd likely merit an all-expenses paid stay at a Hilton, or at the very least a Sheraton overlooking the water.

She finally found the vending machines tucked away in the motel's elbow. Her selections were a generic, apparently local, cola and one of those fake cappuccino machines that spit out boiling coffee-colored paste into foaming sugar water. For safety's sake, she went with the twenty-five cent generic cola and skipped back to her room.

Which, of course, she had locked behind her with the key inside.

#

The man on the night shift appeared to be about her age, and with his mouth closed looked almost like someone she'd find at one of the D.C. bars she'd frequented at law school. He was attractive, blond, with blue eyes almost dark enough to be brown. She'd felt something like relief when she saw him behind the window, thumbing through some unknown publication.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"Yeah?"

He opened his mouth to reveal a row of misshapen teeth, none of which looked like they belonged in the same head. Kendra cautioned herself not to stare, instead riveting her gaze on those dark eyes.

"I'm locked out of my room."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He must have known she was fighting looking at his teeth, because he clammed up. His eyes lowered, almost looked hooded, and he disappeared into the darkness. A moment later he came back with a key attached to a large piece of carved driftwood, presumably from the lake.

"C'mon then," he said.

She trailed him by a half step, which was difficult given how slow the man walked. For some reason they seemed to be taking the long way around, back by the side of the motel that faced the woods.

"I'm Ronnie, by the way."

"Yeah? I'm Kendra."

"Hey."

"I like your carving there. Did you do it?"

"Yeah. Found it down by Crystal Lake. Figured I'd keep me a piece before it was all gone. Them bastards'll have it torn down before the summer's up, I reckon."

"Not if I can help it."

Ronnie slowed, and turned to her. "You with the Parks Service?"

"Yes I am."

He grinned broadly at her, showing those awful teeth, but no longer seeming ashamed. She decided if he wasn't unnerved showing them, she wouldn't let them bother her either.

"Tell you what, it's a damn shame what they're trying to do. My family's been out here since before 1900. We been running this motel since 1950. I know times is rough and all – hell, I've had to hunt small game down by the lake for the last few months just to eat – but this is our land. And we like it how it is." He cocked his head a little and evaluated her. "You seem young."

"I'm qualified. And there's more of us coming," she lied nervously.

Ronnie suddenly seemed distracted. All his attention was focused out on the woods.

Kendra cleared her throat. "This is my room, so –"

"Ssh. You see that?"

"What?"

"Out in the woods."

She turned and peered into the dark black and green. A small pair of eyes glimmered in the early morning shadows.

"Be still," he said. "It's a deer."

"Oh."

Very slowly, with almost mechanical precision, he handed the driftwood key to Kendra. "Open it real slow," he said. "I'm going back to the office to get my rifle. Are you staying with us tonight as well?"

"Depends on how today goes."

"I hope you do," whispered Ronnie as he began the slow walk down the pavement. "'Cause there might be fresh venison on the menu."

#

Kendra returned to her room, showered, and got dressed. It was still only 6:15, and she knew Olsen wouldn't be at the construction site until 8:30. As far as she could tell, there was nothing to do in this town except sit and wait – which was exactly what every old man and woman had been doing on the trip in. Deck after deck of old people sitting in rocking chairs and porch swings, either a needle or a rifle in their hands. The guns had seemed strange at first, but of course this was the old world – the first America. With all the dense forest, plus the massive Crystal Lake nearby, these people were bound to be hunters and fishermen. And boring as the town seemed, the people – Olsen excepted – had seemed very nice, and very concerned about leaving Crystal Lake alone.

It reminded her of taking that trip with her mother to Scotland back when she was eight, when they had visited Loch Ness. Kendra was still young enough to believe in the Loch Ness Monster, and the boat ride she had taken out onto the water was the scariest moment of her life. She kept expecting, at any moment, Nessie to come crashing through the floorboard and scoop her up in its mouth, thrashing her around like she had seen alligators do, before carrying her down to the bottom of the loch where she would enter the belly of a legend.

Did Crystal Lake, she wondered, have its own legend? And if so, could it be used to raise public support for its preservation? Kendra grabbed a piece of complementary stationery and began to scribble some ideas, letting time fly by as she did.

#

Ronnie stalked through the forest, relearning how to navigate with his special X-harness. He'd made it himself – tanned the leather, did the lacings and other decorative work – even the design was his. Where else would someone come across a leather harness that held a rifle and a spear, after all?

He felt the leaves crush and crackle under his boots. No reason to worry. If he hadn't seen the deer yet, the deer hadn't seen him. All he'd been able to make of it back at the hotel with that pretty girl was the animal's shadow, anyway. It looked like a big one.

God, that girl had been pretty. But his teeth. His fucking teeth.

One of these days he'd make enough money to do something about it. He knew he was good looking. Long as he kept his mouth shut, he was able to make a good impression on just about every girl he'd ever met. And there was that one time he went a whole night out at McDougal's Tavern without opening his mouth even once. He'd gotten that Carlson girl to go home with him and do all kind of things, just by pretending that he was a mute. Of course she'd left sometime in the night – he slept with his mouth open – but to take it that far … yes, sir. It was high time he found some way to do something about his teeth. Maybe he could be with a pretty lawyer like the girl in room 13.

There it was, drinking out of the creek. Ronnie stopped, took a deep breath. Wasn't nothing else around – he figured he only had one shot. Much as he wanted to take the deer down the old way, the Lakota way, with a spear instead of a firearm, he didn't want to risk missing the animal and scaring it off. So the rifle was probably the best bet.

Unless he hid behind that great big mossy rock over there. If he missed, and if the dumb animal couldn't see him, maybe it'd think a branch had fallen or something. And how impressive would it be to the pretty lawyer to serve her venison that he'd killed like a warrior, not like a soldier? She might forget all about his teeth, and he'd be able to do something in room 13 he'd never done before.

Not with somebody else, at least.

Ronnie sidled through the brush to the mossy rock. The deer continued to lap at the water in the creek. Once he was completely hidden, he slowly reached for the homemade spear. He slid it out deftly and weighed the thing in his hands. Sawed broomstick handle, sharpened gardening trowel. His aim was good. He'd practiced so many times, when there was nothing to do because nobody came out this way any more unless they were lost. He took a deep breath. He thought of the pretty lawyer. He thought of the savory meat. He rose from behind the rock and hurtled the spear, which hurtled sixty-odd feet through the air and missed the deer by a good mile.

Ronnie poked his head around and surveyed the situation. The deer hadn't even noticed, and continued to drink. The spear jutted out of the ground in front of a large thatch of ivy. He ducked back behind the rock, mostly out of shame. At least he had been given a second chance. The gun would have to do.

There was a small crackling of brush somewhere out there. Perhaps the deer had caught his scent and taken off. He stood quickly, rifle sights already in line. The deer was gone.

So was the spear.

A shape moved in his right periphery. He spun around to fire, but his trigger finger froze when he saw the monster standing there, not fifteen feet away, towering over him. Ronnie opened his mouth to scream, and the monster lifted something – was it a stick? – high in the air. By the time any sound came gurgling past his horrible teeth, the sharpened gardening trowel sliced through the morning air and parted Ronnie's mouth, finally nailing his head to the underbrush. As he began to fade, he saw the deer approach his face from above, and tenderly begin to lick.

#

Kendra looked up from her notes – it was nearly 9:00.

"Shit," she thought, and grabbed her briefcase and keys, remembering to bring the hotel key with her this time. Hopefully Olsen would be more cooperative today, but she knew in her heart of hearts that he was as likely to cooperate with her as he was to sing _Die Fledermaus_ for the boys on the construction site. It was her job to try, and her supervisor had made it quite clear what was riding on her success with the Crystal Lake project. As she briskly skipped past the empty hotel manager's window, she reminded herself to do something nice for that Ronnie kid before she went – even if it was only to recommend a good orthodontist. And then she was off to the construction site, rehearsing exactly what she was gonna say to that asshole Olsen once she got the chance.


End file.
